Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery

Create real-time, highly interactive apps quickly with the powerful XMPP protocol

XMPP is a robust protocol used for a wide range of applications, including instant messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video conferencing, collaborative spaces, real-time gaming, data synchronization, and search. This book teaches you how to harness the power of XMPP in your own apps and presents you with all the tools you need to build the next generation of apps using XMPP or add new features to your current apps. Featuring the JavaScript language throughout and making use of the jQuery library, the book contains several XMPP apps of increasing complexity that serve as ideal learning tools.

Learn about XMPP's instant messaging features, such as rosters, presence and subscriptions, and private chats

Covers XMPP stanzas, stanza errors, and client protocol syntax and semantics

Discusses service discovery, data forms, and publish-subscribe

Addresses XMPP programming-related topics such as application design, event handling, and combining existing protocols

Details the best ways to deploy XMPP-based applications

Explains how to use Strophe's plugin system and how to create your own plugins

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They pre examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Summary: Extremely Helpful
Rating: 5

If you're thinking about doing anything with XMPP and web applications, buy this book.

In writing my first XMPP web application (which is actually my first XMPP application ever), this book has been extremely helpful. The beginning chapters give a thorough overview of the basics of XMPP, while the remaining chapters pre real-world walkthroughs of example XMPP web applications with well-commented, easy to understand source code.

Before I bought the book, I knew enough about XMPP to think that it might be a good fit for a project I'm working on. After reading the book, I felt well-informed about XMPP as an architecture and I was convinced that my web app would, indeed, be a perfect fit for using XMPP as its transport protocol. Thanks to the many code samples in the book, I was able to create a proof of concept of my web application, using XMPP for real-time communication, in only a few days. There's no way I could have gotten up to speed so quickly without this book.

It's also worth mentioning that the author is an extremely knowledgeable and active participant in the XMPP community. On his blog, […], he shares many insights and tips about building XMPP web applications. It's a great supplement to this book and not to be missed.


Summary: Practical XMPP
Rating: 5

I want to preface this review by stating that I read this book without working through much of the code, as I was doing a compare/contrast between XMPP and AMQP over the holidays.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's presentation, and this was a standout book from Wrox for me, as they've improved the quality of their paper (thicker and now white), typesetting (smaller margins), and I suppose even the use of a graphic for the cover (as opposed to the author's picture) was well-received …

The author is clearly well-versed in XMPP, and the introduction was very effective at getting me up to speed on using XMPP in an immediately sense. The chapters built upon one another in complexity, and I never felt lost, or had to re-read along the way.

Overall, I thought this book was effective, and the author's style made for an enjoyable read - one that wasn't terribly dry and at once didn't feel self-indulgent …